Although there have been many advancements in building construction technology in general. Spectacular archievements have been made in the design and construction of ultrahigh-rise buildings.
The early development of high-rise buildings began with structural steel framing.Reinforced concrete and stressed-skin tube systems have since been economically and competitively used in a number of structures for both residential and commercial purposes.The high-rise buildings ranging from 50 to 110 stories that are being built all over the United States are the result of innovations and development of new structual systems.
Greater height entails increased column and beam sizes to make buildings more rigid so that under wind load they will not sway beyond an acceptable limit.Excessive lateral sway may cause serious recurring damage to partitions,ceilings.and other architectural details. In addition,excessive sway may cause discomfort to the occupants of the building because their perception of such motion.Structural systems of reinforced concrete,as well as steel,take full advantage of inherent potential stiffness of the total building and therefore require additional stiffening to limit the sway.
In a steel structure,for example,the economy can be defined in terms of the total average quantity of steel per square foot of floor area of the building.Curve A in Fig .1 represents the average unit weight of a conventional frame with increasing numbers of stories. Curve B represents the average steel weight if the frame is protected from all lateral loads. The gap between the upper boundary and the lower boundary represents the premium for height for the traditional column-and-beam frame.Structural engineers have developed structural systems with a view to eliminating this premium.
Systems in steel. Tall buildings in steel developed as a result of several types of structural innovations. The innovations have been applied to the construction of both office and apartment buildings.
Frame with rigid belt trusses. In order to tie the exterior columns of a frame structure to the interior vertical trusses,a system of rigid belt trusses at mid-height and at the top of the building may be used. A good example of this system is the First Wisconsin Bank Building(1974) in Milwaukee.
Framed tube. The maximum efficiency of the total structure of a tall building, for both strength and stiffness,to resist wind load can be achieved only if all column element can be connected to each other in such a way that the entire building acts as a hollow tube or rigid box in projecting out of the ground. This particular structural system was probably used for the first time in the 43-story reinforced concrete DeWitt Chestnut Apartment Building in Chicago. The most significant use of this system is in the twin structural steel towers of the 110-story World Trade Center building in New York
